Jesus spotted on a fence in York County

An ivy vine growing on a chain-link fence in Spring Garden Township resembles Jesus on the cross.

David McFadden of Spring Garden Township looks up to the vine collection he believes looks like Jesus on the cross along a fence on Hill Street on Friday. (Jason Plotkin — Daily Record/Sunday News)

David McFadden was driving home after dropping his wife off at work when he stopped at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Hill Street in Spring Garden Township.

The 53-year-old project manager from Spring Garden Township takes that route to avoid traffic on Market Street, but on this day, about two weeks ago, he wound up stopped at the intersection for longer than normal as some children from Phineas Davis Elementary School crossed the street. As he sat there, he glanced at the fence across Hill Street and saw it. He wasn't sure what it was at first. He focused on it.

"Does that look like what I think it looks like?" he asked himself. "That's got to be a sign."

Around that same time, maybe a few weeks earlier, McFadden's 20-year-old son, Christopher Joseph, also noticed it. He thought the same thing his father thought, but dismissed it. "That's crazy," he thought. But it stuck with him and every time he passed by, he looked at it and thought about what he was seeing.

The weeks passed and neither father nor son mentioned what they had seen.

Then, this week, McFadden said something.

He told his son that the vine climbing up a rusty chain-link fence bordering the Kinsley Construction complex on Hill Street looked like Jesus on the cross. Joseph thought, "Wow, he read my mind."

The ivy climbs a fence post and spreads laterally at the top of the chain-link, forming a cross. A growth tangled in the three barbed-wire strands atop the fence looks like a head, bowed forward, toward the parking lot.

"I'm glad he mentioned it to me," Joseph said. "I had been noticing it for about a month. I thought nobody else saw it."

It's not the first ivy Jesus. A YouTube video that circulated in the spring showed some ivy growing on a utility pole in Toledo, Ohio, that resembled the Son of God. And it joins the legions of sightings of the Savior on inanimate, and sometimes animate, objects, from the mundane -- a grilled cheese sandwich -- to the weird -- a burnt pierogi.

McFadden's wife, Sonia, said she has heard of those other sightings, adding "but this is right here. It's really amazing. It really is."

Others have noticed it. Some residents of the nearby Elmwood neighborhood have seen it. Workers at the Kinsley complex say they have had people mention it to them.

Christopher Joseph of Spring Garden Township looks over to the vine collection he believes looks like Jesus on the cross. It's not the first ivy Jesus. A YouTube video that circulated in the spring showed some ivy growing on a utility pole in Toledo, Ohio, that resembled the Son of God. (Jason Plotkin — Daily Record/Sunday News)

McFadden hopes it becomes a draw, that pilgrims will flock to the 300 block of Hill Street to witness the leafy embodiment of Christ.

"It's God letting us know his presence is here in York," said McFadden, 53, a Catholic and a Mason. "I hope people come down and see it and visit it and come away with the same feeling."

Not everybody sees it. Kelly Caron has seen people stopping and taking photos of the vine while she walks dogs for Morgan's Paws Pet Day Care Center on Hill Street. She's not sure she gets it.

"Looks like a vine to me," she said.

If you want to judge for yourself, you better hurry. Its leaves are changing and starting to drop and once winter sets in, it will die. It might come back in the spring, though, maybe around Easter.